As promised at the end of last week's post, I have a brand new quilt to show you. I'm excited because it seems like a long, long time since I've been able to celebrate a quilt reveal. This quilt began (as have many of the quilts I'm proudest of) with strip-pieced fabrics in solid colours. I've described the life-changing workshop I took with Nancy Crow in 2010 (see the link below if you want to refresh your memory), from which I came home with a stack of these fabrics. Most of them have been used in other quilts, such as this one, which I called City Lights.
Stripe Flag, on the other hand, uses fabrics I made a couple of years ago just because I wanted a new collection of striped, pieced fabrics to work with. It took me about two months to make all the fabrics, so as you can imagine I had lots left over after this quilt top was complete.
And this new quilt, which I'm provisionally calling Modern Stained Glass, more or less combines the two ideas: the stained glass effect from City Lights and many of the constructed fabrics that I used in Stripe Flag. I'm surprised that I don't have any in-progress photographs for you, which suggests to me that my memory is faulty and that rather than finishing this top last summer, it must have been two summers ago that I was working on it (that is, before I had started this blog and thus before I was documenting my quilt construction process). Poor old quilt tops, languishing for so long in the "to be quilted" pile. (Striped Flag is still there too.)
Oh well, I'll just have to spring it on you. Ta da!
If you scroll up and down between the photo above and the one above that of the earlier quilt, you'll be able to pick out many of the constructed fabrics that were used in both. And if you look REALLY closely, you might see strips that I also used in City Lights. Perhaps you can see that I constructed this quilt as a series of columns. Each of the light sections consists of two or three columns that in turn consist of three columns: two identical ones on either side and a contrasting one in the middle. This was one of the design ideas that came out of the Crow workshop, but I confess I can't remember whether Nancy herself suggested it or whether I've borrowed it from one of my classmates' quilts. (I've spent a lot of time looking back at the notes and photographs I took at the workshop and I learned as much from how other people interpreted Nancy's instructions as I did from trying my own ideas).
Designing this quilt was some of the most fun and the most excitement I'd had in my studio for a while. Something about the way these disparate, seemingly unrelated constructed fabrics worked together, despite their variations of hue and value, to create pulsing harmonies that shifted up and down and from side to side was enormously satisfying to me.
My original layout had five columns of deep blue fabric separating the vertical columns of pieced fabrics, but something about those repeated expanses of plain blue just didn't seem to work: it was too predictable, set up too regular a rhythm from foreground to background and back again. It was my clever husband's suggestion to substitute something a little more interesting, though still retiring in relation to the bright columns, for the three middle columns of blue. In amongst the fabrics I'd constructed I found the green, purple, blue, and turquoise arrangement, each colour separated from the next by a narrow strips of black. To me these black lines read as if they were the lead in a stained glass window, and that idea made that fabric perfect for the purpose. Not only did it help reinforce the idea of stained glass, but it provided the necessary cool contrast to all those lights and brights.
It took me a long while to decide how to quilt this piece. That's actually one reason I'm so behind with finishing quilts: I have a terrible time dreaming up a quilting design and an equally difficult time trying to visualize what it will look like on the quilt in question. I knew I wanted a motif that would enhance the strict geometry of the quilt top and I wanted something that related to the columnar quality of this piece. In the end I settled on a design I used on the quilt I made during the workshop I took with Nancy Crow, a square spiral. In order to emphasize the difference between foreground and background, I used a sherbet orange thread on the light sections and a deep royal blue on the cool, dark sections. This is all done freehand: I've never marked a quilt for quilting and don't think I ever will. It seemed particularly important to work freehand and improvisationally on this quilt since the fabrics were pieced and combined that way.
As pleased as I am with the way this quilt came out, I have to say that it's just as rewarding to have overcome the terrible problems I was having with my Pfaff Grand Quilter, about which I've written here before. Dh's idea that the problem of skipped stitches could be solved by inserting the needle an eighth of an inch lower than normal has worked perfectly. I feel as if I can now finally start the process of learning to master the art of machine quilting.
And, finally, for those of you who always want to know what the back of the quilt looks like, here's a glimpse. For this quilt, I used a cheerful and busy print in rich, saturated blues and yellows that to my eye works well with the front. I confess I belong to the school of thought that insists that the choice of backing fabric does matter. Though I also believe that it's somehow immoral to go out and buy a fabric specifically for backing a quilt, if one has a fabric stash as large as mine. So it's sometimes a puzzle to settle on the right fabric or group of fabrics, if I don't have something big enough to use in one piece.
My only regret about this quilt is that I wish it was twice the size.
In other news, the Greenwood Public Library had its semi-annual book sale on Monday morning, a Victoria Day tradition. Dh and I were on the spot early and we picked up a few volumes. As usual, the challenge for me was to do my best not to buy back the books I'd donated over the course of the previous six months or so. I was mostly successful, but I did weaken in the case of a couple of books about which I thought, "I've changed my mind! I want that one back on the shelves!" One of them, however, was--gasp--GONE when I went back to its table to snag it. Oh well, better that than having it sent off to the dump. Yes, the dump. Last week, dh was in conversation with Judy, our excellent librarian, who was appalled, as were we when we heard, that apparently books cannot be recycled, at least not in this province. The recyclers are, apparently, at war with the booksellers on the grounds that booksellers don't pay the fees for recycling that govern such things as reclaimed engine oil and plastics. So the recycling outfits won't accept books for recycling. And as much as it grieves me to think of perfectly intact books (whatever their literary merit) being pulped and remade into something else, that's much less distressing than the thought that all of these words and ideas should end up at the dump. I feel as if I should have brought the whole lot home to save it from such a fate. Not that I have anywhere to put any more books, but it's the principle of the thing.
Happily, the booksale was well-attended and it was a cheerful crowd around the tables on Monday morning. This sale has become such a local institution that it's as much a social occasion as a fund-raiser for the library.
I heard someone say that it's a major community event. I certainly run into all sorts of people I know, some of whom I haven't seen since the last sale. One reason for the success of the event, I'm sure, is that some years ago the library stopped charging a specific amount (though it was so small as to be practically invisible) for the books and began asking for donations instead. I think there must be a subtle shift in thinking when the onus is placed squarely on the customer to decide how much that box or armload of books is worth. Who wants to have to consider oneself a piker, pulling a fast one on such a worthy institution as a library? Or perhaps the word "donation " reminds people that this is a fundraiser for the library and leads them to err on the side of generosity as a result. Whatever the reason, the library has enjoyed a significant increase in profits from this sale since it adopted the donation policy.
This sale is also the kickoff for the sale of raffle tickets for the quilts and book bag that we made over the winter. It's nearly impossible to see the main quilt (top prize) at this event, because the quilt rack is tucked in for safekeeping behind the board members and volunteers taking money behind their card table. No matter: there will be plenty of other opportunities to see this quilt (and for me to photograph it in its finished state) between now and September when the winning ticket is drawn. But I did ask Ann to hold up the lap quilt (second prize) and the book bag (third prize, and a great thing to win since it will be filled with brand-new books when handed over to the winner). I kept forgetting to bring my camera to our Sunday afternoon quilting sessions when these last two were in the finishing stages and I regretted not being able to show them to you at the time. So here they are.
The lap quilt is made from a pattern by Valori Wells in her book Radiant New York Beauties. (Yes, the book was mine and is now in circulation in the library after I donated it last year.) A New York Beauty, if you are among the uninitiated, is a traditional block design that features a quarter circle surrounded by an arc of spikes. Judy and I had been pining for a few years for the chance to make a New York Beauty as the lap quilt, and at last this was the year. To begin with, no one else much wanted to take on yet another fiddly bit of paper-piecing or faff about with curved seams. But in the end everyone got involved (good thing, because I failed badly during the crucial week in the countdown to the immoveable date with the long-arm quilter and had to bring my unsewn bits back to the group and plead for help). And I think we were all pleasantly surprised by how easily it went together. We used a new-to-us method of paper piecing, brought to us by Myrna who'd learned it in a workshop. It involves using freezer paper rather than tissue paper and therefore isn't foundation piecing at all, but something I can't think of a name for. I wrote at the time about how badly I bungled several of my attempts while working on this quilt, but I think I got the hang of it in the end.
We stuck to the colour scheme of the original quilt pretty faithfully, using our leftovers of blues, greens, and purples from the main quilt and sparking them up with Judy's donation of a large scrap of vivid orange-gold. We altered the border scheme slightly but otherwise made few changes. All of us were both happy at the result and pleased to have added a new technique to our toolboxes of skills.
The book bag is entirely Ann's work and it's a stunner. She's been making the book bag most years for quite a while, often with the help of Gerri's design suggestions.
Pretty snazzy. Imagine this generously-sized bag filled with new books and I think you'd have to agree that this is a third prize worth winning.
If you'd like to buy raffle tickets for these quilts and bag, please contact the Greenwood Public Library, either through the website [add link] or by email at greenlib@shaw.ca. They're $2 each or three for $5. The draw is the day after the weekend of the Rock Creek Fair, September 19 and 20. If you win, we'll get the quilt to you somehow no matter where you live.
Spring continues to explode around us, and since I happened to have my camera with me the morning of the library booksale I was able to stop on the way home and take a few shots of the brilliant acid green foliage in our little valley. I love the varied greens in the different species of grass in this field, a result of the fact that parts of the field flood when the creek is at the height of spring runoff.
And here at home things are looking equally lush.
With spring, however, comes the frantic avian urge to nest and start raising a family. For about two weeks our yard was the site of an intense war among swallows and between swallows and bluebirds for possession of the bird houses on the fence posts by the vegetable garden. I was working in the garden one morning and heard a kerfuffle, which turned out to be a wing-to-wing tussle, actual fisticuffs (feathericuffs?) between a swallow and a bluebird, duking it out on the ground. I'd never seen that before. And the dive-bombing! the shrill invective! the cold stares! the standoffs! the sudden rushes meeting with stubborn refusals to move from the birdhouse roof! On and on it went until, as I said to dh, I was afraid that they'd all waste so much time and energy fighting over who got the birdhouses that none of them would actually end up raising any young.
We noticed that one birdhouse away from the garden wasn't being used and decided to move it to the site of the most intense warfare, hoping that the move would add up to enough nesting sites to go round. When dh went to take it down from its original post, he found it full to the roof, literally, with twigs. We have no idea who did that or why. But in the last few days, after this house was moved, things seem to have sorted themselves out. The bluebirds have the central birdhouse in the row of three, and two pairs of swallows have claimed the houses on either side of it. Peace at last.
As you can see, my usual quilt photography setup lies between two of these birdhouses, and I was feeling guilty as I hung the Modern Stained Glass quilt up on the fence yesterday afternoon in order to photograph it. The birds were understandably nervous about my approach and flew away. I don't know whether they all came back, as it's been raining since I took these photos. I'm trying not to wring my hands about it.
Good thing spring is short--we'd be exhausted from all this activity if it lasted any longer.
Love your new quilts. I also have a large amount of made strips of Nancy Crows classes. Congratulations on making such inspiring pieces.
Posted by: Donna Sheppard | 05/26/2015 at 06:10 PM
Thanks, Donna! I find those strips terrifically inspiring all by themselves, without any prior idea of a quilt I'd like to make from them. I hope you're putting yours to good use too.
Posted by: Anne at Shintangle Studio | 05/27/2015 at 12:26 PM